Artistic mayor achieves Andrews' goals

Published 6:00 pm, Saturday, January 19, 2008

ANDREWS - Robert Zap is a man of many talents, the most valuable of which has probably been his ability to demonstrate love.

By Bob Campbell

Midland Reporter-Telegram

- Robert Zap met Al Capone as a boy and served as a missionary on an Apache reservation

ANDREWS - Robert Zap is a man of many talents, the most valuable of which has probably been his ability to demonstrate love.

Grandson of Czechoslovakian immigrants, the 79-year-old Cicero, Ill., native met Al Capone twice as a small boy at Christmas parties and became a missionary and adopted three Apache children.

He has preached here for 40 years and shown expertise at plumbing, carpentry, painting, sculpture, sailboating, stained glass making, electrical work, school teaching, the judiciary, auto mechanics, cooking, cabinet making and municipal government.

Mayor of Andrews for nine years, he uses a cooperative style of leadership but does not mind taking a stand.

Zap's original family name was Zapivovarsky and neither his father Frank nor mother, the former Julia Harbacek, had much formal education.

His dad was a coal truck driver and maintenance supervisor who kept Zap and his sister away from Capone's racetrack and "speakeasy" nightclubs.

"Al Capone ran our town, but he was kind to the kids," recalled Zap. "Every Christmas, he threw the biggest party you can imagine for 200-300 of us. We shook hands with Santa Claus, the mayor and then Capone.

"He was scary looking with that big scar on his face and would say, 'Hello, how are you?' He was fairly young. He didn't look young, though. He was kind of dissipated.

"It seems odd that he was given humanitarian awards when he could kill someone without blinking an eye. I honestly think he was sincere and had separated the areas of his life. If you know Chicago of that era, the gangsters were a little better than the politicians."

When asked what it was like in Cicero, west of Chicago, in the 1920s and '30s, Zap said, "As far as our town was concerned, Capone protected it. He didn't want anything to cause undue attention, so he kept things real quiet.

"People like my dad minded their business, went to work, came home and avoided all that. You find yourself going back to your parents and my dad would do anything for anybody."

Zap and his wife, the former Joyce Rude, had three children, adopted four and kept foster children. He earned an anthropology degree at Wheaton College, a master's at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich., and did graduate work in behavioral science at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

He was a lab technician for an oil research and development company while a student and was recruited as a chemist; but he followed brother-in-law Norris Fischer into the ministry. His older sister Violet lives in Tucson.

"I met a missionary from Basra, Iraq, who said, 'You're going to make a lot of mistakes in your ministry, so be sure you make every one of them in love,'" Zap said. "That's what I have tried to do."

A Reformed Church in America pastor at Rochester, N.Y., he took a missionary posting to the Mescalero Apache Reservation near Ruidoso, N.M., and adopted Sylvia Zap of San Angelo, Lisa of Big Spring and John of Andrews. The couple also adopted Greg of Austin and had Liz Stottlemyre of Andrews and twins Pat of Columbia, Mo., and Steve of Rolla, Mo. They have three grandchildren.

Much of the mayor's art focuses on Native American culture, including a sandstone sculpture of Cochise (1815-74), a Chiricahua Apache chief who, unlike Geronimo (1829-1909), is revered by his people.

"Cochise is one of the leaders they're proud of," said Zap, whose church had two of Cochise's grandsons, his granddaughter and a great grandson. "They didn't like Geronimo because he was always getting them into trouble."

Notwithstanding the Apaches' fierce reputation, Zap found them amenable to conversion. "Their identification with creation makes it not much of a transition," he said.

"In some ways, they were more Christian than we are. They take life but don't do it casually. They taught me to hunt and not kill anything you're not going to eat. They're great at it. A man was always bringing us turkeys and he'd just shoot their heads off."

Zap in 1968 took the pastorate at Andrews Presbyterian Church, where he worked until his 1983 retirement while substitute teaching, serving as municipal judge and doing carpentry and other jobs. He still preaches at the First Christian Church.

"I like to preach on what love really means, not the superficial idea but all the way through from God's love for us and sacrifice of His son to the way we're to act," he said. "If there is a weakness in the church, it's that we fail to love as Christ has. We talk about it but don't do it.

Citing the need to involve the citizenry, they recently declined a company's promise "of millions of dollars" to OK a high level radioactive plant where nuclear weapons would have been dismantled.

They had authorized Waste Control Specialists' low level nuclear repository west of town but drew the line there. "They wanted a decision now, but we said, 'No, if that's the case, we don't want you because our people have to be behind it or we're not going to do it,'" he said.

"New Mexico jumped on it and they're going to have it somewhere."

Zap wants to use interest from the city's $500,000 endowment of its UTPB affiliated Business & Technology Center to provide free education. "The Council's No. 1 goal is to work with the youth and get them on the right track," he said.

"I don't like this business of testing and the pressure we put on kids to be something rather than taking time to talk and care about them. They need a sense that God loves them because they're children of His.

"They're looking for something and not finding it. If having your way and getting everything you ask for is the answer, why are they committing suicide? Ultimately, your satisfaction is in feeling you're here for a purpose."

"He's a fantastic artist and did the leaded stained glass windows at the new Permian General Health Care nursing home. He and Joyce were traveling with all their kids in New Mexico when he cooked his manifold roast. He put a roast on the engine and after three or four hours, he could tell by the aroma that it was done."

Bristow and Zap were once almost ejected from an adult education woodworking class at Andrews High School. "We were horsing around and the poor instructor thought we were going to hit each other with boards," Bristow said, laughing.